Ryu2.mind

One of the central themes that was repeated at Urbana 2000 (and I'm guessing pretty much every other missions-mobilization event in some way, shape, or form) is that all of us are blessed to be a blessing -- ie, as Christians fulfilling the Great Commission, especially towards those in "closed" countries, we are called to serve those who are unreached -- whether by teaching, medicine, business, engineering, or whatnot. At the same time, it's not just a one way street, as was so vividly pointed out at Urbana, etc. and corroborated through my own experiences. Those that we are reaching can often be a blessing to us as well.

So, here's a way the nascent Christ church in the two largest unreached countries, India and China should really consider in order to "bless" ministries back in the "first world":

Ministry IT outsourcing.

Yup, you read that right. Hey, if it's working for the business world, why shouldn't it work for ministry organizations as well?

Some personal observations: Amongst the various churches and parachurch organizations that my friends and I have been involved in over the years, I've noticed one thing regarding their tech strategy and usage: they're either very saavy when it comes to tech and how to use it appropriately and strategically (eg, including but not limited to Wycliffe amongst the parachurch, or GrX or Wellspring amongst Bay Area churches) -- or else they are somewhat lost.

By lost, I don't mean they're luddites who still use pencil and paper or whatnot -- they do try to use IT to their benefit -- but a bad tech solution is worse than no solution at all, in my opinion, and often, with the best of intentions, people dive right in to implementing something without having learnt at least the basisc, and get bad solutions as a result.

Case in point: right now (what's prompting me to write this entry), I've been suckered to doing some MS Access consulting work for an organization who shall remain nameless.

Let me preface this by saying that I have the utmost respect for this group -- many of my friends have been involved with them in some way, shape or form, and I agree with what they're doing from a ministry point of view. Anyhow, I'm working pro bono, of course -- for one thing, I'm a graphics person, not a database person. My exposure to databases comes from having taken Stanford's intro DB class, CS145, which covers little more than SQL syntax and basic data design principles, and some practical stuff working in ResComp and E.piphany before I decided I had enough of "business software". Furthermore, I hate MS Office with a vengence. And no, I don't automatically hate everything that is Microsoft (heck, as a developer, Xbox is my favorite game console), but Office is something I try not to touch if possible.

So, if you hire me as a database consultant, you get what you pay for -- not too much. They wanted me, so I guess they were desperate.

I was right. They don't know the first thing about designing a relational database schema: normal forms, referential integrity, etc...

Their database was set up by someone in an overseas office, and they've got no-one in the US office who knows Access, except as a end-user. (Bad in and of itself -- if you don't have proper support that's accessible, any technical solution will cause headaches later.) So, anyhow, at this point, I've managed to rework their schema, and transform and massage the data so that it conforms to the new system, but now, there's a whole bunch of VBA macros and other !@#$ that needs to be rewritten as well.

Arrgh... enough is enough.

So, what if some believers/IT gurus in a house church in Bangalore or Beijing were to offer their services to this group here in the states at little or no cost -- not only do we get a working and properly implemented database solution for much less than one would expect, we also continue to forge relationships between this missions organization and the church in their area of interest. Beyond a business partnership, which is all one would have in the secular world, we've now potentially got a ministry one as well.

Anyhow, to the Indian and Chinese believers out there -- you're blessed to be a blessing! And a lot of churches and organizations in the states need your blessing! =) ;)